


Sic Transit Gloria

by blanchtt



Series: Ignis Aurum Probat [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7792987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary had Jesus, but if she stays at the convent and becomes a nun she won't have babies. Maybe it's a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sic Transit Gloria

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/gifts).



 

 

 

"Hail Mary, full of grace," Sister Eleni instructs, and Helena follows along, repeats the words in her mind so that they’re _right_ this time. “The Lord is with thee.” 

 

The room is freezing cold, but Helena dares not twitch, to move her hands from their position of prayer to rub them together, fingers stiff and cold. As Sister Eleni prays, sharp eyes trained on her for the slightest movement, Helena closes her eyes. This is acceptable - she's being moved by the spirit for once, Sister Eleni can only assume. 

 

Helena ignores the drone of the prayer, thinks of the pretty wood-and-gilt triptych of Mary and Jesus and the saints in the church, the one that looms over them at mass, and breathes deeply as the pebbles she kneels on seem to grow sharper, digging into her kneecaps with a vengeance. It hurts, and so she shifts her hands just so, digs her own nails into her left index finger and focuses on that, that pain, her own, to spite Sister Eleni and her gravel.

 

At night is the only time they have to speak to each other without the nuns present. Yulia in the bed next to her shies from pain, from the nuns, from life, and Helena feels a mixture of pity and disgust for her, alternating between ignoring her whimpers at night and slipping her a crust of bread she's stolen off the dinner table when all of the Sisters’ backs were turned. Philippa is stubborn but not much more useful than Yulia, mouth shut in a scowl as she's beat with a switch, but even she cries out eventually. The others, older girls she hasn’t learned the names of, barely look at her. 

 

Sister Eleni finishes the prayer and begins again, and Helena opens her eyes, stares at the blank wall not a meter away from her so that Sister Eleni doesn’t think she’s fallen asleep. She’s not stupid enough to throw herself in front of the others, to help anyone. That only brings more pain for them both, and the nuns do not spare the rod. Helena shifts, but it does nothing to alleviate the agony - no matter how she moves, the stone floor and gravel are unkind to her knees. 

 

Mary had Jesus, but if she stays at the convent and becomes a nun she won't have babies. Maybe it's a good thing. There is something about her that irks Sister Antonina in particular, and the woman is on her like a hawk.

 

Helena is certain her arm's been broken at some point, back when she did not have the words for it, and the nuns are not so overwhelmed with orphans as to let her die of sepsis. That would be one less pair of hands in the fields, and so Sister Agnes, the one who is the least unkind but that Helena does not trust either, sets the bone, and Helena slips from her touch as soon as she can, curls against the corner of the bed and holds her arm against herself. 

 

It heals faster than it should, she comes to understand, which does not help her case with Sister Antonina, and Sister Antonina is the first to suggest there are demons inside of her. Most of the other Sisters beat her twice as hard, after, as if she's done it impudently, on purpose. Helena hardly feels it and only bares her teeth, bears it, and laughs.

 

This also does not help her case, and soon the other girls start to shy away from her, out of fear of her or fear of association with her. No matter.

 

Helena swallows thickly, thirsty, lips cracked but unable to lick them. She knows that Jesus died and rose after three days and three nights, and at seven years old and with her mouth sewn shut - _you'll learn the prayer right or you'll not speak at all, Sister Eleni hisses_ \- she knows that she can do it, too. 

 

 

-

 

 

She's been locked in the closet for two days. Two days of disorienting darkness, the only fresh air coming from the crack underneath the door. When the muggy air becomes too heavy Helena crouches down, sucks in breaths with her lips brushing the wood of the door. But mostly she sits on the floor, back to a narrow wall, with just enough room to spread her legs, tips of her toes touching the opposite wall. She can hardly hear a thing going on outside with the thick walls of the convent, and so mercifully she's insulated from the worst of the heat, at least. Lord knows Sister Antonina did not think to give her an extra blanket, a pillow, and food and water for her stay. 

 

Helena taps her fingers against the floor tunelessly. Thirst and hunger are there, politely vying for her attention, while the sting of the scratches from the switch have long since faded from the backs of her thighs. She sits the way she knows Sister Olga abhors and grins - legs splayed, dress hiked up to her thighs, her hair a wild, curly mess pulled free from a crown of braids. There is not much to do in the dark, but the satisfaction of hearing a Sister come by periodically, ask if she’s ready to repent, and be met with nothing but silence makes her grin, wild laughter bubbling up in her throat. At least here, after they’ve dragged her out for another beating and then thrown her back in, she does not have to bring in wheat with the others. 

 

She feels something flutter against her skin, something brush by and then begin to crawl up and onto her bare calf, and she leans foward, snatches it up quickly.

 

It’s a snack, whatever it is. It's hard and sharp and moves jerkily between her thumb and forefinger, and is likely not a mouse. But anything will do. She holds it up, brings it to her mouth, and in the darkness hears a small, rough voice. 

 

"Hey, hey," the creature says, gruff and annoyed, and Helena pauses. "You don't want to do that, kid."

 

Kid. Like she’s an American teenager. _Hamburger_ , her stomach pleads at the thought, and Helena jiggles the little thing. “I do not?”

 

“No,” the thing says, and it sounds certain enough to make her pause again as it speaks. “Because I'm going to get you out of here.”

 

Helena hums, and _tsks_ , “Lies, lies, lies.” Like a fox, it will do anything to avoid being taken alive. She can understand this, from both ends, but it is her holding the little thing and not the other way around, and so today it is the little thing that will be eaten and not little Helena. 

 

“Eat me now and fill your belly, or wait and see and get out,” the little thing says neutrally, and the possibilities intrigue her. “Your choice.”

 

"My choice?" Helena breathes, phrase a foreign form in her mouth. 

 

Does she want to leave the closet? She does, yes. She is hungry and thirsty, and her legs are cramped from disuse, and she wants her bed. Waiting is a game she's used to. Waiting for the Sisters' beatings to end. Waiting for food. Waiting to see if Yulia, bruised, or Philippa, crying, will make it through the night. What is one more day?

 

“We wait,” Helena agrees, though she holds onto the little thing tightly.

 

Within the hour, there are footsteps again, and the little thing speaks. “Lie down and moan,” it suggests, and Helena stiffens. 

 

_“Helena?”_

 

“I do not moan,” she whispers, indignant, and the little thing sighs heavily. 

 

“Do me a favor, kid, please?”

 

_“Helena!”_

 

And so with a scowl she unbuttons the pocket on the breast of her dress, and feels the little thing toddle across her shoulder where she’s let it rest, dropping down into the fabric before she lies down and the closet door opens up.

 

“See,” it whispers, pleased, as the nun heaves her up by her arm, hard enough to hurt her shoulder, and marches her to her bed. “What'd I tell ya?”

 

 

-

 

 

God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. That, Helena remembers. The rest, not so much. 

 

Helena lies in the herb garden, flat on her belly, in the dry soil amongst the waist-high bushes of rosemary. She should be weeding, but out of sight of Sister Antonina no one can tell her what to do, and the sun is warm and makes the rosemary smell nice. 

 

She watches a bee make its always over the pointy leaves of a sprig of rosemary, reaches out with index finger and holds it just so that the bee crawls up onto her nail, pausing. It tickles, and trails yellow pollen on her finger as it makes its way slowly toward her hand. She’s careful not to breathe on it, lest it become irritated and sting.

 

“Stupid thing,” Pupok says, as if reading her mind from where she sits next to her. She raises pincers in an almost human gesture that reminds her of an exasperated Sister Eleni when she had burned dinner. “Stings once, and it's dead. Useless.” 

 

_“Helena! Where are you?”_

 

She ignores the calls of Sister Natalia, who does not know how to hit as hard and accurately as Sister Antonina. “You sting many times and do not die,” Helena agrees as the bee suddenly takes flight, buzzing away quickly on tiny wings. This is better, she knows, no matter how soft the bee was. There was Helena and Pupok and a puppy once, warm and fuzzy, and now there is only Helena and Pupok. 

 

_“Helena! You’re supposed to be working!”_

 

There is the crash of the kitchen door slamming shut, and it’s unlikely Sister Natalia has gone back inside. Helena sinks fingers into the earth, but knows that if Sister Natalia comes to drag her away that holding on will do her no good. And her dress is smudged with dirt now, too. She’ll end up with her head held underwater for that. 

 

“You better go before she comes looking for you,” Pupok warns, in a way that asks, _Was it really worth it?_

 

Yes. To have one moment to herself, basking in the sun, no Sister watching her. Pupok wouldn’t understand - she is stronger than a dog and easier to hide, but not always there. 

 

Helena lets go of the ground, raises a hand to look at the black dirt under her nails, and decides, “Let her.”

 

_“Helena!”_

 

Sister Natalia is close and angry, and there is only so long she can hide amongst rosemary with her fair skin and fair hair and white dress that she’s gone and gotten all dirty. “Oh, Helena,” Pupok sighs, and lately it seems that she sighs quite often. “You're so pig-headed sometimes.”

 

Helena snorts and snuffles like a pig, laughing wildly because _let her come get her if she wants her so_ , and Pupok crawls away between the roots of the rosemary bushes as Sister Natalia finds her easily.

 

She meets Pupok again in the closet, after Sister Natalia is done with her, and Pupok does not say _I told you so_ like a puppy or a bee might, righteous in their blind happiness. Instead she only crawls onto her knee and rests, Pupok’s weight silent and comforting. 

 

 

-

 

 

She gets to know Pupok intimately well in the four months in the closet, and perhaps most importantly, she learns that she does not rot or wither away, despite how little sustenance she’s given, how little room to stretch, how little fresh air. 

 

But enough is enough, and her silence has begun to hurt only herself, Pupok has pointed out. There have been girls who have disappeared, and as she’s grown older Helena knows that orphans are not adopted from convents. Over everything, even more satisfying than angering the Sisters, is the will to live, unstoppable. And so despite the hunger and thirst, the lightheadedness and the weakness in her limbs, Pupok scuttles away into the darkness and Helena crouches flat against the floor in a blind spot, and springs as soon as the closet door is opened one night as a Sister comes by to make sure she's not dead. 

 

Sister Theodota is unlucky. Neither kind nor mean as far as Helena knows - she’s joined their convent in the time that she’s been locked away - Sister Theodota is merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. _Too bad, so sad_ , she thinks, something Pupok has chanted before, and she bares her teeth and goes for Sister Theodota’s throat. They've _all_ done this to her, anyway.

 

Despite her condition it takes six nuns to pull her off of Sister Theodota, and she bites and kicks and scratches and spits as Sister Agnes tends to Sister Theodota gasping and rattling on the floor, clutching shocked and shaken at her bruised but intact throat.

 

 _Not crushed_ , Helena realizes, mood going foul, and there is the closet again, overnight.

 

The next day, she meets Tomas.  

 

 

-

 

 

Tomas gives her a clean dress and takes her in his car, which never having been in one for longer than a minute she is promptly sick in. The drive to Kiev is almost silent, and they stop at a restaurant with a big yellow sign that sells hamburgers. Tomas goes to the counter and she follows, and he lets her order what she wants, and so she asks for three burgers, two large fries, and a chocolate shake, which Tomas smiles at. 

 

They take their food and sit, and Helena eats until her stomach hurts, and maybe she's done it, she thinks as she waits for Tomas to look away before reaching out, snatching one of the burgers still wrapped up off the table, shoves it in her jacket pocket - maybe she’s fought so hard that nuns have given up. 

 

But no. They rest overnight but do not stop in Kiev, do not take the planes that roar over their tiny hotel, and after a quick breakfast of coffee and nothing else, Tomas drives her out of the city, to a field, gives her a riffle, and teaches her how to shoot. 

 

The nuns had numbers on their side, and the vastness of the fields and scarcity of the cities around them. Tomas has a gun and has brought her to a maze of a city. There is no running from either, and so Helena thinks back to the day in the garden, of sinking her hands into the warm earth and waiting for the inevitable.

 

She thinks, too, of _come and get me_ , but now is not the time. 

 

On their second night together, after a morning of target practice, Tomas makes it clear what she’s to do, now.

 

“There are others,” he says gravely, and Helena listens from her bed on the floor - a pillow, a blanket, her jacket, a nest of _soft-warm-sleep_. “Imperfect copies, man playing God. Copies of you, the original, that we must wipe out.”

 

 _Sestras_ , she thinks. _Copies_ and _original_ fly by her, of no use. Only the reality of sestras, not like the girls at the convent, scared little mice, but sestras strong and smart, in numbers. Safety. 

 

“Family?” Helena asks, and it is a terrible, terrible idea. Tomas moves like a flash, and a fist meets her shoulder, back, head, and she curls up against the blows.  

 

Tomas is not like the nuns. He is a man with a man's strength, and she learns that she is a small woman and that Tomas can _hurt_ her. It takes days for the bruises to go from purple to green to yellow, where before they took only one, and the threat of _broken arm_ and _dislocated shoulder_ returns as he manhandles her into the car, drives wildly, and shows her the home of the first sestra.

 

He is wily, too. He takes the gun when she does not use it, and when they settle into a cargo container in Budapest a cage appears. Helena pats her pockets as she's dragged towards it, feeling for Pupok, for food, for anything - but Pupok has been gone since the convent and so has the food and she has not even a scrap of wire to pass the time as Tomas’ hand pushes down on her head, shoves her in, and locks the door with a resounding clang. 

 

 

-

 

 

Maggie used to leave directions and food. Now there are neither, and it is the food she is most distraught about, gnawing on her own knuckles and pacing before sitting down, stomach hollow. Busy doing the Lord's work, she has not eaten in three days. Helena sits in the storage locker, watching the rain fall just a few meters away, but doesn't contemplate not going. Beatings are temporary. Broken bones heal. Scars scab over, and over, and over. But to be locked in a cage could spell a death sentence - metal is metal, metal is not tricked by lying and moaning, metal does not have a throat to tear out, and there is only so long even she can go without food and water, as she has learned with Tomas. 

 

The German is gone. Now there is the cop left to be dealt with. Sneaky, sneaky copies. There are others here, too, but for now, Elizabeth Childs is her sole concern. 

 

Except Elizabeth is not Elizabeth - _sneaky, sneaky, sneaky!_ \- and something stills her hand and the knife poised in it. 

 

Helena looks down at the copy, and she wonders if this is what Mary felt when the angel Gabriel visited her, a vague but powerful feeling that this copy will mean _something_. Because this copy, unlike other copies, stares back at her cold and hard, and Helena half expects her to spit in her face. Instead, her pause allows the copy to reach for a rebar, and pain like she’s never felt before makes her reel, nearly vomiting. 

 

Helena reaches blindly for her motorcycle, leaves the copy behind, and hides. 

 

She cannot go back to Tomas like this, duty unfulfilled. Once she’s locked herself in someone’s bathroom, Helena yanks the rebar out herself, nearly passes out and fights through it, and stitches herself closed. 

 

The amount of blood does not bother her, even as it seeps hot and persistent through her shirt. Neither does the pain. She takes a spare key from the storage locker, and baits the copy into Maggie's abandoned apartment. The copy comes with gun drawn, but she has no need to. 

 

Helena sinks to her knees, grimaces at the raw, stabbing wound that heals much, much more slowly than any wound ever has, and pushes back the hot wave of worry. The copy pulls up a chair, not a meter away, and Helena shuffles forward, carpet like silk against knees that have known only rock and dirt and concrete. 

 

The copy lets her get close enough for Helena to brush lips against her knee, to quick-smooth slip between her thighs, begin to kiss her way up, supplicant, and at her touch the copy shoves her away immediately, quick and hard, a look of revulsion on her face accompanied by a sound of disgust as she holds her gun more tightly and Helena is met with the barrel of it just beyond the tip of her nose. 

 

“Bloody hell, what’s _wrong_ with you?”

 

And Helena rocks back, feels a warmth flood through her, that such a good and beautiful sestra does not demand _this_ of her. “You feel it, don't you?” she rasps, eager, reaching out but not touching, and the sestra’s eyes, _her sestra_ , flick from sad to angry to sad again, never stopping on one for long. “Our connection.”

 

“Fuck off,” her sestra says, gun waved threateningly in her face, and the anger is back again as Helena shirks back, hands clutching at her side.  

 

“Sestra,” she tries again, and her sestra explodes out of her seat, and Helena winces. But her sestra’s anger is not taken out on her, on her body - there is only her sestra shaking, shoulders tense, as she turns around, gun in hand, eyes darting as someone pounds on the door, as a male voice demands something. 

 

“I ain’t your bloody sister, alright?” her sestra says, and she walks up to her, pushes Helena more gently than anyone ever has. “Go on, get out of here,” she says, motioning with her gun, and Helena obeys, slipping out the window.

 

 

-

 

 

The man who lies with Rachel stands no chance, and as Helena finishes with him and turns the corner, finds her sestra strapped to the shower-head by her wrists, she understands that the story of Jesus rising from the dead, although a blessed miracle, means that even He was, at one point, vulnerable. 

 

Sarah has stabbed her, and she did not die. Sarah has shot her, and she did not die. Luck, or God, or something else? She, like Sarah, is a sestra, and although they are as hard to kill as roaches, she and Sarah _can_ be killed, as she had killed other sestras before she knew better. Sarah’s eyes are wide, whites all around brown, and a trail of blood drips from where Helena knows is a very dangerous place for blood to drip from. 

 

She cuts Sarah down from the shower, drops her knife, and Sarah slides down the tiled wall, Helena following, crouching in front of her. Sarah takes a minute - _take it, take it, the shock will pass,_ Helena wants to say, but says nothing, tongue dead in her mouth, because the shock will pass but not the memories - and finally Sarah throws off the plastic ties from her wrists, reaches out, grabs her and cradles her against her in a different sort of fighting, one Helena is helpless against as she wraps arms around Sarah’s trembling frame, buries her face in hair that smells like _Kira_ and _home,_ and feels Sarah’s tears dampen the collar of her dress. 

 

“Oh my god, Helena."

 

Sarah breathes too quickly, ragged and growing faster, and Helena can almost taste her panic. She doesn’t know where it comes from, but she’s sure Pupok would be proud.

 

“Much thanks, sestra, but I am not God.”

 

There is a moment before Sarah's quick-bad breaths stops, silence, and finally a wet, shaking laugh, and Helena pulls away, sits back on her heels, grins wide because Sarah does not tell her _don’t sit like that_ or hits her, only reaches up and draws the back of her hand against her eyes, sniffling loudly. 

 

“Bloody fuckin' hell,” Sarah breathes, and then laughs again. “Who knew you had a sense of humor?”

 

And for the first time since before she can remember, before the convent and Tomas and the fish people, Helena lets herself admit as the twin pangs low in her belly make themselves known once more that _it hurts_ , and that all she wants is for it to stop, please.

 

“They took something from me,” she says softly, “from _inside_ me,” and Sarah’s lingering laughter dies.

 

 

-

 

 

“Yeah, I know, meathead,” Sarah says, voice thick with something, and Sarah understands like none of the other sestras do, even though sestra Alison has babies and sestra Cosima and her Delphine are doctors, and that is why Sarah is here and no one else is as Helena grasps at her hand, as Sarah urges her gently to _push, Helena, c’mon, I know you can do this_.

 

Adventures with her sestras bring new experiences each time. Her body feels battered and bruised, but in a fashion that brings only a surge of something warm to her heart. 

 

Sarah holds one of them and the doctor gives her the other, and Helena looks down at the tiny sleeping face, the pink blanket and the little hat, and almost wants to hand her back. What if she breaks her? She has scars in spades, from razors and iron and bullets, and in comparison her daughters seems so small and fragile, like a touch from her could bruise them.

 

And Sarah who is here because she has done this before must read her expression and leans down, careful of the little one in her arms, and murmurs, “I felt like that, too. You’ll be fine.” Once the doctor and nurses and machines have all gone away, Sarah forgoes the chair next to her bed, holds on tight to the little one in her arms and toes off her combat boots, shimmies into bed with her, shoulder-to-shoulder. 

 

Exhausted, sleep tugs at the edges of her thoughts. “You are good sestra and good mother,” Helena says, letting her head tilt back against the pillow, and she hears Sarah snort, although she doesn’t argue like she always does, at least not tonight. “You teach me, yes?” she asks, and Sarah takes her daughter from her, is gone for a moment to lay them both in the basinet nearby, and the lights around them flick off before Sarah slips back into the narrow bed next to her. 

 

Already her belly cramps, and Sarah must know this, too, because she reaches out, takes her hand and laces their fingers together. “O’ course. Gotta make sure you don’t burn down my nieces’ house makin' borsht, yeah?”

 

The words reach her, fuzzy. “We do not eat this,” she argues, words slow to her own ears, and Sarah laughs.

 

“I know, meathead. I know." A squeeze to her hand clasped in Sarah's, and the brush of a lock of Sarah's hair against her cheek as she leans close, soft, accompanied by the creak of her leather jacket. Her sestra's fingertips, her free hand, brush warm against her skin, adjusting her gown, pulling it back up onto her shoulder proper from where it's begun to slip. "Go to sleep already, alright?”

 

And because Sarah is here, and has asked, Helena does.

 

 

 


End file.
